adamyntium

Category: fitness

  • I couldn’t do one pull-up. My dad’s hack fixed that brilliantly.

    I couldn’t do one pull-up. My dad’s hack fixed that brilliantly.

    One of my friends was lamenting that he can’t do one pull-up. Another friend playfully retorted:

    But I bet if you reeeeeeally wanted to you would. 🙂

    She’s right… sort of. But she didn’t say how.

    Back in the day, though, my dad knew how.

    In the 7th grade — when I was humiliated that I couldn’t do even one pull-up in gym class — my (very strong!) dad was low on sympathy but ready with a solution.

    Days later, he installed a pull-up bar on my bedroom door. And then the conversation went like this:

    Me: But I told you, I can’t do even one pull-up!!!

    Dad: I know. Just do as much of one pull-up as you can, every single time you enter or exit your room.

    Me: 🙁

    Dad: 💪

    In less than a week I could do a pull-up.

    And by the time the next pull-up test came ’round at school, I was able to do FOURTEEN (14) pull-ups (!), more than almost everyone else in class, including the bullies, the jocks, bullying jocks, and the jockeying bullies! (you can clearly tell how much fun in my early years as a young nerd)

    So what did I learn from this?
    What can you, humble reader, learn from this?

    Persistence pays off, sure, yeah, blah blah blah.
    But chopping something into smaller, easier, slower, lighter, less-scary blocks AND THEN DOING IT REPEATEDLY ON AN UNAVOIDABLE CUE… that is the useful answer!

    Or, more specifically…

    • It should be something you really want to do or achieve, not something your spouse tells you you ought to do :D.
    • It can be reasonably broken down into slower / simpler / easier / less-scary chunks.
    • You can tackle it multiple times a day.
    • And, ideally, the trigger is clear and — even better — physically associated with the task.

    In this case, a pull-up bar above my door fit all of the above! I wanted to show up my mocking classmates, it’s possible to do a quarter or half a pull-up, with the bar being above my bedroom door the practicing was accessible, the trigger was clear/unambiguous (anytime I entered or exited my bedroom), and the pull-up bar was staring me in the face!

    Have you tackled a challenge in a similar way? What did you achieve, and how did you achieve it?

    P.S. — Here’s one that’s similar to the one I have on my study door currently 🙂

  • I’m Yoga’ing and I feel a bit like Homer Simpson

    Today I completed my third yoga session.  The class is taught by an apparently-quite-skilled (and patient and helpful!) instructor here at the main Google gym, and she’s noted that it’s essentially “Iyengar-flow” style.

    I, however, have decided to nickname it D’oh-whoa style.  D’oh: not in a painful sense, but in a OH HAI I HAZ HIDDN MUSSELS kinda way.  And whoa: just absolute wow in watching my classmates.

    Let me clarify.  This class—though filled with more intermediate/advanced folks than beginners—features people of many ages and all body types.  I’m staring at shapes and movements… people doing handstands and headstands and balancing with grace… and I’m admiring deceptively simple and stunning lines.

    Maybe it’s my background as a dancer that has me being so observant, so in awe, and also so embarrassed that my body is not moving like that, probably will never move like that.  And yet, despite my dancing experiences and mindset, I’m also feeling a bit shy and embarrassed about staring.  Perhaps being a guy (but, interestingly, far from the only guy in this class) is partly to blame for my self-consciousness… not primarily about my own un-performance, but about my watching of others, learning, trying to do what they’re doing, feeling what they’re feeling.

    *  *  *

    The instructor kindly noted that—while most can achieve great improvement and wonderful results from yoga—some are innately, genetically predisposed to being able to do certain things.  I, seemingly, do not have such genes.

    But I’ve already felt good things from this class.  I’ve enjoyed the feeling of stretchiness and the body awareness afterward (with surprisingly and happily not too much soreness).  And after each class, I seem to be in a better mood than before I hit the mat.

    So I’ll likely continue this, along with my (typically) once-weekly weight lifting and about once-weekly swing dancing and/or waltzing.  You may note that all of these activities have two things in common:  they’re improving my body, but they’re also at least slightly social.  Sure, there’s very minimal talking in yoga, but there’s a pleasure in the familiarity; I’ve already seen several folks I know from around the ‘plex, and this is both motivating and comforting.

    *  *  *

    Have any of you tried yoga?  If so, what kinds, and do you have any words of wisdom or encouragement for me? 😀

  • Self improvement — how do you measure your progress?

    A few years back, I had some free sessions with a personal trainer at my gym, and one of the most useful takeaways was this:

    Unless you write stuff down, it’s too easy to “fudge the facts” in your mind.  How much pushups are you doing with good form?  What are you eating each day?  We tend to maximize the former, minimize the latter, and that’s not good.

    For starters, he made me write down each day *everything* I ate and drank, along with estimated calories associated with each thing I put in my mouth.  Boy, that was a depressing but enlightening shocker!

    Well, I decided to go one better and start my own personal health chart (in Excel), daily noting my progress on several fronts (weight, body fat percentage, pushups, etc.).  Alas, after a few months, that kinda fell by the wayside, so I picked it up again a year later.  And, once again, that only lasted a few months. 

    I’m trying yet again, and—now that I have the regular routine of a full-time job—I’m hoping it’ll somehow be easier to keep up the list.  For the very curious, I’ve included below exactly what I’m measuring:

    – E-mails still in my inbox
    – Body weight
    – Body fat percentage
    – Pushups (#)
    – Various medicines (e.g., remembering to use Nasalcrom, an allergy medicine)
    – Meditation (in minutes)
    – Stretching (yes/no)
    – Aerobic exercise (minutes)
    – Strength training (minutes)
    – Mood (1-10, 1 being suicidal, 10 being euphoric)
    – Mood jot (my mood in a few words… e.g. “Overwhelmed and frustrated” or “Optimistic and excited”)
    – Sleep (time I went to bed, time I got up, total hours of estimated actual sleep)
    – Notes (what I accomplished that day, major challenges facing me, etc.)

    *  *  *

    In looking over my previous efforts, I’ve noticed the following:
    – My weight seems to increase the day or two after working out.
    – Eating massive huge fatty meals seems to reduce my weight in the short term (!?)
    – I tend to be overwhelmed/stressed more than I thought I was.
    – My sleep patterns are more erratic and less healthy than I assumed.
    – Surprisingly, there doesn’t seem to be a strong correlation between getting lots of sleep and feeling less tired the next day. 
    – After gaining nearly 10 pounds at Google and then losing those same 10 pounds, I’m now about where I was weightwise a year or two ago (still about 15 pounds to go!)

    *  *  *

    Have you kept your own “metrics journal”?  What are some of the things you have measured?  Observations?  And did such a journal help you reach goals?